


Toxic Genes

by ckret2



Series: Vaguely Connected Harry Goodman & Mewtwo One-Shots [2]
Category: POKÉMON Detective Pikachu (2019), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Comfort/Angst, Developing Friendships, Emotional Support, Gen, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Mewtwo cautiously letting Harry glimpse at twenty years of emotional baggage, Post-Canon, technically the hurt already happened now it's just comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-05 17:34:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18833440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ckret2/pseuds/ckret2
Summary: Three weeks after regaining his body, Harry and Pikachu come home to find Mewtwo crouched under a furniture fort in a way that reminds Harry far too much of how Tim used to hide when he was a scared child. Harry crawls in to see what’s wrong. They talk about nature and nurture, about murder, about friendship, about guilt, about hugs—and make the first steps toward processing the nightmare they went through.





	Toxic Genes

**Author's Note:**

> Vaguely a sequel to “[Medical Research](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18776701)” (also on [tumblr](https://ckret2.tumblr.com/post/184777176072/medical-research)). If you don’t want to read “Medical Research” first, all you need to know from it is that pre-movie Harry asked Mewtwo to voluntarily come to PCL, because he’d been told that PCL was doing totally harmless medical research.

"What the...?"

Harry's gaze was first caught by the streetlight coming through his inexplicably broken window blinds; then by the shattered glass beneath the window; and then, as his gaze moved across the floor, by upturned books and papers, smashed mugs, a broken TV, and half his furniture—desk, upturned couch, coffee table, and a bookcase from his bedroom—piled haphazardly in one corner.

"Oh, god." Who? He'd investigated a couple of criminal organizations over the last few years, he'd helped a thug with a Geodude get arrested only a couple of days before he'd been Pikafied— "Tim? Tim!" Pikachu jumped off his shoulder and darted for the pile of furniture while Harry rushed to the door to Tim's room. The bed frame was overturned and dragged halfway to the door, the mattress was missing—

" **He is not home.** "

Mewtwo's appearance always came with what felt like an atmospheric change inside Harry's head, like a low pressure front heralding a coming storm. Its voice was a rumble of thunder: booming, inescapable, everywhere. Harry could clearly feel Mewtwo's pressure on his mind now; had he been too distracted when he came in to notice it sooner? "Mewtwo? Where are..."

Pikachu squeaked to get Harry's attention. He turned back to the living room just in time to see Pikachu's crooked tail disappear under the furniture pile.

"You've gotta be kidding me," he muttered.

Harry knelt in front of his desk. (Hoo boy, his old knee injury did _not_ like that; maybe Mewtwo really did change atmospheric pressure wherever it went.) He bent down, peering under the desk, deeper into the furniture pile—

And there, in the dark, was Mewtwo. Sheltered beneath a fort made of upturned furniture, the couch and bookcase propped precariously over its head, sitting in a nest made with Tim's mattress and the couch cushions, huddled with arms and legs crossed in a way disturbingly reminiscent of how Harry had seen it curled up while in containment at PCL.

"Uhh... hi?"

" **Hello.** "

Harry tried to shuffle on all four under the desk. "What's— _ow._ " His back had banged into the bottom of the desk. He dropped down to army crawl in instead. "What's up?" He stopped when his forearms bumped into Tim's mattress and looked up at Mewtwo.

Mewtwo looked down on Harry like an alien surveying an Earthling for the first time, with vast violet eyes that seemingly held all the vast space and potential of a distant star-birthing nebula. It was humbling and terrifying, the profoundly powerful mind that could be glimpsed through those eyes.

And with that unearthly mind shining through its massive eyes, Mewtwo gazed down upon Harry—and with a voice like the thunderous warning of an inexorably advancing storm, it spoke—

" **I wanted company,** " it mumbled.

"Oh," Harry said. "Under—under my furniture?"

Mewtwo adverted its gaze, like any embarrassed human would. " **I—wanted a cave,** " it said. " **But not to be alone in one.** "

"Oh," Harry said again. "Got it."

Pikachu had already climbed into Mewtwo's lap and settled there, nuzzling its crossed arms.

" **I apologize for the mess,** " Mewtwo said. " **I did not intend...** " It started to trailed off, leaving the thought unfinished; but before it could truly leave the thought behind, it finished, " **... to turn your home upside-down.** " It hadn't _needed_ to finish the thought. Maybe, Harry speculated, a telepathically-transmitted thought came all in a package, and you couldn't just... stop one in the middle? That made sense to Harry, at least.

"Ahhh, this place has looked worse," Harry said, although it wasn't really true. He'd had a hell of a time getting his files reorganized after he got his memories—and his body—back; but he hadn't needed to worry about straightening out pieces of furniture that were precariously propping each other upright. But he'd worry about that later. He wasn't about to scold the most powerful Pokémon on the planet for making a mess.

Especially since, Harry figured, right now, Mewtwo probably needed its "cave" more than Harry needed a neat apartment. Harry wasn't as good at reading Mewtwo's body language as Pokémon he was more familiar with, like Pikachu or Ludicolo. But from what little Mewtwo had said so far, and from what Harry could see in the dark of its eyes, curled shoulders, and drooping tail, Harry got the impression that it was tired. Tired, and more than a little shellshocked.

When Tim had been four or five, he'd gotten a cheap blue toy tent, kept up with plastic white rods, with a big swirly Polywag face on the side. They'd set it up in a corner of the dining room for him. He'd loved to play in the tent. But when he'd started school, or when a babysitter was coming over, the tent gained a new purpose: it was a hiding place, where more mornings than not he'd run to hide when his parents looked for him to get dressed for school, or when the doorbell rang indicating the babysitter's arrival.

The phase hadn't lasted long. He soon got to know the kids and had fun at school. He always remained suspicious and distrustful of his babysitters, but when his grandma had retired and taken over babysitting duties he'd happily latched on to her. He outgrew the tent.

But Harry still remembered when his little boy had used it—how he'd curled up under the tent, crying tears of anger and fear, terrified to be taken to a strange place or left with a strange person.

Mewtwo was calm, quiet, subdued—almost abashed at its own behavior—but Harry was reminded so much of Tim in his Poliwag tent.

So he said what he'd always said when he found Tim hiding: "Do you wanna hang out?"

Mewtwo hesitated. " **Yes.** "

Climbing into Tim's child-sized tent had been hard enough, and that had been when Harry was fifteen years younger. The furniture cave was a little roomier, but the underside of his tilted bookcase was a lot less forgiving than a vinyl tent when he bonked his head on it. Mewtwo hovered a few inches to the side to give him more space, tilting its head under the slope of the upturned couch, and Harry eventually managed to squeeze into the space beside it, turn around, and sit. At this close range, he was uncomfortably aware of Mewtwo's scent, which was something between "urban alley overrun with wild Meowth" and "Machoke that missed a shower after a good work out." He tried to breathe shallow breaths and told himself he would get used to it. He'd gotten used to a Pikachu in the apartment. Granted, Pikachu wasn't nearly seven feet tall and taking up half the space in a poorly-ventilated furniture fort.

Now that he was properly situated, he moved on to the second question he'd asked whenever he'd been permitted to enter Tim's tent: "You wanna talk?"

Tim had usually shaken his head and hid his tearful face in his crossed arms. So he wasn't surprised when Mewtwo replied, " **I do not know that there is anything for us to discuss.** "

It was wrong, of course.

They could talk about Howard Clifford's pending trial, and whether or not Mewtwo was willing to appear as a witness. It was rare for Pokémon to provide testimony in trials, but it _did_ happen, more frequently when the Pokémon was a telepath that could directly speak for itself, or when the Pokémon didn't have a trainer or partner who was involved in the trial and so couldn't be suspected of having been coached in its answers by a human—both of which circumstances applied to Mewtwo. But Mewtwo might not want to go to the trial, where it would be the center of astronomical attention and possibly a target. Having suddenly burst out of the tabloid pages into the streets of Ryme City, already tourists, scientists, and collectors were flocking to the city with hopes of catching a glimpse—or more—of the hitherto-unproven Manmade Miracle, The World's Only Clone Of The Mythical Mew, The Most Powerful Pokémon In The World.

Or they could talk about where Mewtwo was going to go now. Did it want to go back to Kanto, where Harry had found it and persuaded it to come to PCL? If so, did it want to fly all the way back itself, or would it be willing to ride? Harry would be happy to pay for whatever means of transportation Mewtwo was happiest taking—hell, Harry would buy a used car and drive it all the way back to Kanto _himself_ , it sounded like a great road trip anyway—if Mewtwo even suggested that it was nervous about traveling, visible and exposed, all by itself, all the way home. It would be a valid fear, now that it had made international news. Or did it not want to go to Kanto? Did it plan to hang around a while longer? Or maybe go traveling, see some other regions, perhaps find somewhere new to live?

Or they could talk about the phantom pains Harry still had. They'd improved steadily during his first few days back in his own body, but the recovery had hit a plateau, and he felt like he'd been basically the same for the past couple of weeks. Even though Mewtwo had restored his body in perfect health—even reducing a few (but not all) old aches and pains he'd picked up in the course of his detective work—at times he still faintly felt the burns, the injuries, the broken bones, that he'd had when he'd dissolved into Pikachu. Like a second body, ghostly, superimposed over his own, still carrying his fatal wounds. Would these psychic hurts fade over time? Or otherwise heal? Was there something Mewtwo could do about them? Not that Harry wasn't grateful beyond words for everything Mewtwo had _already_ done to save him; but it was exhausting to keep waking up feeling fire on his back and broken glass under his cheek and hands, to realize that the fire was his comforter and the glass was his mattress.

Or they could talk about what plans Mewtwo had now to protect itself. Early on, after Mewtwo had come to PCL but before they scientists had discovered the treasures hiding in its genes and demoted it from "volunteer research participant/consulting geneticist" to "harvestable cache of R," it had mentioned—and downplayed—its concerns about the organized crime syndicate that had pursued it before discovering its new location. Surely that fear had been multiplied tenfold, now that every eye in the world was peeled for a sign of Mewtwo. Anybody who spotted it would know what it was; any information about its location would spread much faster and farther without being dismissed as a hoax or urban legend. Was it going to withdraw from civilization completely again, find another cave or a deep jungle to hide in? Harry had been approached by an agent of the International Police a few days after the whole incident, interviewed, given a card in case he thought of or found any information to share with her, and told he might be contacted again later for more details. He could pass on Anabel's contact info to Mewtwo. She'd said she had experience with incredibly powerful and nearly unknown Pokémon, and that where Mewtwo was concerned, her top priority, above all else, was to ensure that it was safe and not about to end up in another lab. Harry felt like they could trust her; and if Mewtwo really did fear some crime syndicate coming after it, it could find few better allies and defenders than the International Police.

Or they could talk about whatever internal turmoil had driven Mewtwo to break into Harry's apartment, to trash the place in its frantic efforts to make a safe "cave," and to huddle there all alone for however long it took Harry and Pikachu to get home.

But Mewtwo said there was nothing to discuss.

So Harry said, "Okay. We can just sit for a while. How's that?"

" **Very well.** "

And so they sat. Harry doubted the silence would last long. It rarely had with Tim.

Pikachu had been looking back and forth between them as they spoke, but now that things were settled, he returned to nuzzling. In the dark under the furniture, Harry could see tiny sparks where he rubbed his cheeks against Mewtwo's arm; and then faint spectral psychic light rippling through Pikachu's fur. Was Mewtwo petting Pikachu telekinetically? Pikachu started making that faint, high pitched, whispery " _piiiii~_ " he always made when Harry found just the right spot to scratch under his chin, so apparently so. Wow. That was a new one.

Mewtwo held out longer than five-year-old Tim ever had. But eventually, it said, as quietly as a fleeting reminder of a subconscious memory, " **My genes are toxic.** "

It was so quiet that it took Harry a moment to recognize the absurd statement as a rumble of thunder rather than some strange flicker of his own brain. "What?"

" **The R,** " Mewtwo said. " **It was derived from one of my own genes. Did the doctor tell you what she named the gene?** "

"The doctor" always meant "Dr. Ann Laurent." Harry found that Mewtwo had difficulty telepathically conveying human names if they weren't also words with definitions. It had called him "Hairy"—which _sounded_ the same as "Harry," but he could feel the difference in the way Mewtwo thought the word—until he'd persuaded it to stick to "Good Man" or "detective" instead. "Ann" or "Laurent" were far beyond its communicative capabilities.

"No, she didn't say."

" **The Berserk Gene,** " Mewtwo said morosely. " **It makes Pokémon vastly more powerful, but—confuses them. It makes them lose their minds with fury.** "

Harry nodded. He _knew_ all that, of course—far too well. He and Pikachu had seen R at work in the streets, and they'd tracked it back to the source. His stomach had filled with lead every time they'd uncovered another clue suggesting the drug came from PCL, where he'd thought he'd left Mewtwo to safely work on developing medicine. But if Mewtwo felt the need to re-explain all that, even though it _knew_ Harry knew—

" **And this gene is inside me. This gene, that makes Pokémon powerful, but dangerous. And I, the _carrier_ of the gene, the _most_ powerful Pokémon...**" Mewtwo could have trailed off there; but it again went on anyway, shame and regret tinging its thoughts: " **I have been very dangerous.** " During the car wreck, Harry's nose had been clogged and singed by hot ashes, and he'd felt them coat the back of his tongue; carried on Mewtwo's thoughts, he tasted ashes now, but he didn't think Mewtwo was remembering the wreck. " **After _everything_ —is that, then, my nature? Is that what is foundational to me? To what I am? Danger, and an inborn incapacity to control my own anger?**"

"No!" Harry said immediately. "No, no, that can't be— Look, you saved my life, didn't you? And the whole city. All while _not_ destroying PCL in a fit of fury, or—or snapping Howard's neck." Harry had called him "Howard" the whole time he'd been working for him, back when Howard had been claiming that his work at PCL with Mewtwo would be used to create medicine for Pokémon and humans based on Mew's genes; now, after everything, the name felt wrong coming out of Harry's mouth. It sounded too familiar.

Even now, Harry still wondered if Howard Clifford had been lying, if he'd _always_ planned to use Mewtwo to forcibly fuse people and Pokémon together; or if at one point he really had been planning to make medicine, and only zealously seized upon his new plan when the lab accidentally stumbled upon R and started working out what it and Mewtwo's powers were capable of.

"There's a whole lot of people you have some really good reasons to be furious at—even _me_ , I'm the one who got you _into_ this mess—but you never lashed out. You didn't punish—you saved. _That's_ your nature."

" **No, that's my nurture,** " Mewtwo said. " **My _nature_ is—destruction. My first conscious act was a massacre.**" It flinched, tail twisting and thumping against the wall, and it jerked its head to look away from Harry again, as though it hadn't meant to spill that revelation out. Pikachu hopped back at the suddenness of Mewtwo's motion, landing on the mattress in front of its crossed ankles.

And Harry was suddenly aware, once again, of Mewtwo's scent, of the weight of a thunderstorm pressing down on his mind, of the way the tilting furniture seemed to trap them together, of how thickly Mewtwo's presence filled the air surrounding Harry.

Mewtwo had killed people.

Harry swallowed hard; and asked, with a twitchy crooked smile, like he was trying to make it a joke: "Well—well, did—they deserve it?"

Mewtwo still didn't look at him. That was answer enough. But still Mewtwo replied: " **No.** "

Harry tried to process this. He tried to lean back a little, to get some space to think; his head thunked against the bookcase again. "Ow."

Mewtwo flinched again, then shifted, and the furniture shifted with it. " **I shouldn't have intruded.** "

And once again Mewtwo wasn't a killer but a self-conscious child. "No, no wait, hold on—" Harry automatically reached out and grabbed its arm. Mewtwo went still, and so did the furniture. "Hey, you came here because you needed company, right? What kind of friend would I be if I turned you out just like that?" ... _Were_ they friends?

" ** _Are_ we friends?**" Somehow, when Mewtwo asked the question, it came across like a Pokémon one fifth its height.

Which sealed the deal for Harry. "If we weren't, we are now. How's that sound?"

" **Even though I've killed humans?** "

"What's a couple of murders between friends?" Harry asked, unconvincingly. "Hey. I'm a detective. I've worked with the police more times than I can count. You're far from the first murderer I've met."

Although it _was_ the most terrifying murderer he'd met. And honestly, he wasn't sure how he was going to get over that knowledge.

Mewtwo didn't leave, but it did shrink back from Harry's touch, pulling its arms and legs in closer to its body. Pikachu scooched closer to it, but didn't try to get on its lap again. Harry wondered if Mewtwo could feel his doubts.

"Okay—it's scary," he admitted. "You said you killed a bunch of people who didn't deserve it, that's scary. But you know what's _scarier?_ The killers who say their victims _did_ deserve it. That's—I don't know if it's possible for people or Pokémon to be 'dangerous' in their very nature. I honestly feel like it _isn't_ possible, personally—no matter what genes you happen to have. But, if it _is_ possible to have a dangerous nature—I think the only people with that nature are the ones who'd kill someone else, and then, looking back on it years later, say that they were asking for it. And that's not you. Right?"

Mewtwo lowered its gaze, thinking that over. Pikachu tentatively climbed back into its lap.

" **Perhaps,** " it said grudgingly. Then straightened its back and snarled silently. " **This is foolish. I decided years ago that I was not going to let who I was be dictated by how I was created—or _what_ I was created to be. That what I am is determined by what I choose to _do_ , and nothing else.**"

"Yeah!" Harry nodded encouragingly. "Exactly! That's the exact right attitude."

" **But I had hoped that, for once, I could—find something in my nature to be _proud_ of,**" Mewtwo said. There was an edge of desperation, of grief in its voice. " **I wanted to— _be_ something inherently good. The source of medicine. Not merely something inherently bad endlessly striving to try to become good. I thought I could be _different_. Even after they found the Berserk Gene, I thought—if I stayed long enough, if they kept looking, and found something else... they might find... it.**"

Mewtwo sounded unsure what "it" was supposed to be. Like it had no idea what, exactly, it had been hoping for.

" **I don't know,** " it said. " **I don't know. I wanted something good to come from me. Instead—I—permitted atrocities. Who knows how much R is still out there? Everything that has happened to Rhyme City is my fault.** "

Harry sat up straighter. (And, for the third time, bumped the sore spot on his head against the bookcase. Ow.) He'd had no idea Mewtwo blamed itself. He'd thought, if anything, Mewtwo would blame _him_.

(Harry elected not to explain that "Ryme City" didn't have an H, he knew it didn't make a difference to Mewtwo.)

"Hey," he said softly. "You didn't know. How could you have? You were _trapped_ in there, remember? If you'd been able to get out of that tank, you would have."

" **But I wasn't contained at the start,** " it said. " **I had a choice. I could have chosen to leave at any time after they discovered what the Berserk Gene did. But I _stayed_ , even while they were experimenting with what would become R, and I saw them losing interest in other avenues of research—because I thought I could make up for it. Until they sealed me up for good.**" Its tiny nostrils flared. (Harry found itself wondering whether Mewtwo could adequately breathe, seven-ish feet tall with those little holes. Was it getting enough oxygen?) " **I'm not naïve around humans. I should have known better. I allowed myself to be deluded by _hope_.**" In Mewtwo's venomous mental voice, "hope" came out like a dirty four-letter word.

Harry didn't know what to say to that. It felt cruel to try to tell Mewtwo it shouldn't have worried so much about proving its _DNA_ was "good" when its _actions_ were what mattered, when Mewtwo itself had clearly already learned that lesson and was disgusted with itself for forgetting it; it felt disingenuous to try to reassure Mewtwo that it was indeed a good person regardless of what weird side effects one or two of its genes held when, suddenly, Harry himself wasn't entirely confident he thought Mewtwo was good after learning just a little bit more about its past; and so he said the only other thing left he could think of to say, the only thing that made sense and that he felt was true.

"I'm sorry," he said. "Everything they did to you, everything they made you feel about yourself—it's _my_ fault. You never would have gone to PCL if I hadn't tracked you down and talked up all the great research they were doing. Whatever you blame yourself for— _I_ don't blame you. I've _never_ blamed you. The experiments they did on you, the R, the—the weird Poké-fusions—all of it, every bit, was my fault."

He paused.

"Okay, that's—that's not true, it's Howard Clifford's fault, and I can't _wait_ to see his trial, but—that's not the point! I was the middle-man! I _let_ you fool yourself into thinking that PCL was gonna do great things by playing around with your genetics, because—because I thought they were, too. I fooled _myself_. I—I really, really wanted to be doing something good."

He'd wanted, so much, to think he was doing something right with his life. He hadn't been able to somehow miraculously save his wife from a slow, declining death. He hadn't been there for his son when he'd needed a dad—not when he was grieving, not when he was struggling through puberty, not when he was trying to figure out how to be an adult. Even as a detective, he felt like half of his jobs were jealous spouses asking him to follow around their partners and see what secrets they were keeping—that wasn't fighting crime or helping people, it was just paid stalking.

And then Howard Clifford had asked him if he wanted to do something revolutionary for both human- and Pokémon-kind.

And Harry had gone and proudly asked Mewtwo the same question.

"You know—murdering aside," Harry said, "from what I've seen, I think, overall, you've been a much better person than me."

Mewtwo tilted its head, considering that.

" **If you consider yourself responsible for everything I did because you brought me to PCL,** " it said, " **then you must also consider yourself responsible for everything I did because you rescued me. I could not have saved myself, much less Rhyme City, if not for you.** "

 

"Well," he said grudgingly. "When you put it that way." Now he was the one avoiding eye contact. He could feel Mewtwo's gaze on the side of his head.

" **You find that difficult to accept.** "

"Well, I mean—I guess."

" **Feeling guilt is easier than feeling anything else. If multiple emotions are in competition, guilt wins.** " Mewtwo spoke with the authority of someone who had decades of experience and careful study to draw upon. " **Is that true for humans, too?** "

A lump formed in Harry's throat.

Howard Clifford had said Mewtwo had been made about twenty years ago—it might be younger than Tim, even if only by a few months.

Harry thought again to Tim crying in a tent by himself because he was scared to go to school, and tried to imagine someone younger than that being a murderer.

Surely, Mewtwo hadn't been responsible. How could it have been? It might have been its _fault_ , but that didn't mean it was _responsible_.

Harry said, "Do you do hugs?"

" **What?** "

"Is that—is that a thing that Mewtwo do? Or that Mew do? I don't know where that behavioral instinct would come from. _You_ , do _you_ do hugs?"

" **I—don't know,** " Mewtwo said. " **Nobody has ever tried to hug me before.** "

"Oh, that's heartbreaking."

" **I _have_ been cuddled,**" Mewtwo offered. And dropped its gaze demonstratively to Pikachu, who was still snuggled up in its lap.

"Yeah? Cuddles are good, then?"

" **I suppose.** "

"Great, then we're trying out hugs. C'mere. If anyone needs a hug, you do." He scooted over, looked Mewtwo up and down, tried to figure out the least awkward way to manage this—after a pause, Mewtwo helpfully leaned a few inches away from the couch—and at last, he slid one arm around Mewtwo's upper back, and another just below its crossed arms, so he wouldn't pin its arms in place. He'd pet a hairless Delcatty once. The texture wasn't _quite_ the same, but it was close. "There. Good?"

For a moment, Mewtwo tensed; and then after another moment, it started to relax. It didn't uncross its arms, but Harry did feel a very light telepathic pressure around his torso, which he figured was probably about the same as getting hugged back. It was honestly a little disconcerting, but not bad for a first effort. " **Thank you.** "

"Listen," Harry said. "You've had an _incredibly_ rough time lately. And—throughout life in general, from what little I know about your whole mysterious history, but— _especially_ lately. And I get that you're an independent Pokémon, you don't wanna be tied down by a trainer, that's fine, but—just because you're a _loner_ doesn't mean you have to be _alone_ , you know? You've got friends here—me, and Pikachu—"

"Piiika!"

"—and Tim too, I know he's grateful for all you've done to help us. If you ever need something—company, a safe haven, _anything_ —you're always welcome to do _just_ what you did tonight, and come right back here. I'll leave a window unlatched for you, okay?"

" **You would let me take refuge here?** "

"Of course. Why wouldn't I?"

Mewtwo looked at Harry, then at Pikachu, then at Harry again; then finally looked away, and repeated, " **Thank you.** " The words hung heavy with a multitude of conflicted emotions. Harry hazarded a guess that this was what Mewtwo being choked up sounded like.

"Any time."

After a moment, Mewtwo said, " **I should tell you—because of the Berserk Gene, I am literally toxic.** "

"Yeah. That's the first thing you mentioned. It's all right. It doesn't define you. And hey, maybe it isn't even active in you? I mean, I've got the genes for my dad's blue eyes, but they don't show up in—"

" **No. I mean I am _toxic_. At the lab they found a pheromone in my perspiration caused by the Berserk Gene. I sweat diluted R.**"

Harry jerked his arms off Mewtwo. After a moment, he scooped up Pikachu too. Pikachu squealed in surprise. "Thanks for the head's up."

" **I should have mentioned it sooner.** "

"We'll do hugs with blankets next time, okay?" He wagged a finger at Pikachu. "And _you're_ getting a bath." Pikachu whined.

He could see Mewtwo curling in on itself again. "Hey, c'mon. Don't be like that." He figured if he was mildly infected, it wasn't going to get any worse if he put a reassuring hand on Mewtwo's shoulder. "Vaguely poisonous sweat isn't a death sentence. It's—sure, it's a challenge, but—" Everything about Mewtwo's life seemed like a challenge. Who did it torque off in a past life to end up with such a bad hand in this one? "But now you know about it, and you can adjust. Right? And you've still got friends here."

Mewtwo didn't reply, apparently sunken into its own thoughts again. It was a melancholy thing, wasn't it? 

Well. It had a lot to process. Harry didn't blame it if it had to spend a lot of time just trying to think things through.

They _all_ had a lot to process. Mewtwo, Harry, Tim, Pikachu—the whole _city_... They'd hardly even started.

Harry was exhausted.

Mewtwo looked exhausted.

"Stay the night," he said. "You can sleep in here. And you should have something to eat. I have poffins, got any flavor preferences?"

" **Grepa and occa berries make me sick.** "

"I'll check the ingredients." He set Pikachu down to let him exit first, and then awkwardly crawled out after him.

As he walked to the kitchen, he pulled out his phone to text Tim a warning about the state of the apartment. Tim could sleep on Harry's bed. Harry was used to roughing it.

He wondered if there was a place nearby where he could buy a small tent to set up indoors.

**Author's Note:**

> Also available on [tumblr](https://ckret2.tumblr.com/post/184885941287/toxic-genes).
> 
> I think I've got one more Harry & Mewtwo fic in me—a shorter one set between this one and "Medical Research." We'll see what happens after that!


End file.
